Anti-Fraud Initiatives Report (FY 2014)
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Enclosure – Page 1 – The Honorable Sam Johnson Social Security Administration’s Anti-Fraud Activities For Fiscal Year 2014 Overview Few government agencies touch the lives of as many people as we do. We administer the Old- Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance programs (Title II), providing retirement, survivors, and disability benefits to qualified workers and their families. We also administer the Supplemental Security Income (Title XVI) program designed to provide a monthly payment to aged, blind, or disabled people with limited income and resources. In fiscal year (FY) 2014, we paid a combined total of about $894 billion in Title II and Title XVI benefits. On average each month, nearly 64 million individuals received Title II or Title XVI benefits. Regrettably, there will always be people who try to steal. Fraudsters will tirelessly work to develop new and innovative ways to steal money from the American people. It is our duty as stewards of our trust funds to work aggressively to prevent and detect fraud and to recover the money stolen from the American people. Our message to fraudsters and potential fraudsters remains unchanged — we will find you; we will prosecute you; we will seek the maximum punishment allowable under the law; and we will fight to restore the money you have stolen to the American people. To more efficiently and effectively detect, deter, and mitigate fraud, waste, and abuse of our programs, we are establishing the Office of Anti-Fraud Program Management to provide centralized oversight of and accountability for our anti-fraud activities. This office will drive our anti-fraud efforts by sponsoring new initiatives, supporting component anti-fraud efforts, centralizing anti-fraud predictive analytics capabilities, ensuring vigilance in preventing and detecting fraud, and supporting the Inspector General’s efforts to investigate fraud. The Office of Anti-Fraud Program Management will be critical in helping us implement an anti-fraud framework that supports a comprehensive approach to fraud prevention and aligns anti-fraud efforts with industry standards. This report highlights our major anti-fraud initiatives for FY 2014. It is intended to supplement previous Congressional updates to the Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security (Subcommittee) and expand on previously unreported anti-fraud initiatives.1 This report also includes information requested by the Subcommittee Staff on September 23, 2014, including the metrics we will use to measure whether we are meeting our anti-fraud initiative objectives and the timetable for each objective. Our Acting Commissioner established our anti-fraud initiative as a top priority and is tracking all of the implementation milestones. 1 Acting Commissioner Colvin to the Honorable Sam Johnson, Chairman of the Subcommittee - February 14, 2014 Acting Commissioner Colvin to Chairman Johnson - March 27, 2014 Tom Parrott, Acting Deputy Commissioner for Legislation and Congressional Affairs, to Kim Hildred, Majority Staff Director for the Subcommittee - September 5, 2014 Enclosure – Page 2 – The Honorable Sam Johnson Within this report, we provide metrics for each anti-fraud initiative, where applicable. We require our anti-fraud initiative leads to provide updates on a monthly basis. We realize combatting fraud is a dynamic and evolving process, and we have made significant progress since our initial report on February 14, 2014. Highlights of our efforts discussed in this report include: • Implementing the Baltimore Cooperative Disability Investigations Unit on September 22, 2014; • Completing the second phase of the data analytics project in September 2014; • Implementing the New York, San Francisco, and Kansas City Fraud Prevention Units; • Conducting a National Anti-Fraud Conference on September 18, 2014; • Barring 117 representative payee applicants as part of our Representative Payee Criminal Bar Pilot; • Imposing $21.2 million in civil monetary penalties under Section 1129 of the Social Security Act and successfully resolving 391 cases in FY 2014; and • Blocking 16 problematic routing transit numbers and recovering $2 million in fraudulently redirected benefit payments and monies. Update on Initiatives Last Reported September 5, 2014 As discussed, we have provided the Subcommittee with regular updates on the following anti-fraud initiatives throughout FY 2014: 1. Increase Continuing Disability Reviews; 2. Expand Cooperative Disability Investigations Units; 3. Anti-Fraud Training; 4. Data Analytics; 5. Fraud Prevention Units; 6. National Anti-Fraud Committee; 7. Submission of Evidence Regulation; 8. Fraud Prosecution Project; 9. Representative Payee Criminal Bar; 10. Symptom Evaluation Research Effort; and 11. Psychological Testing Research Effort. This section provides an update on these initiatives. For each initiative, we provide the: • Responsible component(s); • Lead Individual(s) • Background/objective; • Update/timetable; and • Metrics to measure. Enclosure – Page 3 – The Honorable Sam Johnson 1. Increase Continuing Disability Reviews (CDR) Responsible Component: Deputy Commissioner for Operations (DCO) Lead Individual: Ray Wise, DCO Background/Objective: With the recent appropriations act, Congress provided us with funding to significantly increase the number of CDRs that we conduct. While the primary purpose of a CDR is to determine whether a beneficiary is no longer entitled to benefits because his or her condition has medically improved, our ability to perform significantly more CDRs may allow us to detect increased numbers of potentially fraudulent or suspicious activities. Update/Timetable: As of September 30, 2014, we completed 525,875 medical CDRs, exceeding the budgeted goal of 510,000. On September 23, the Subcommittee requested the breakdown between mailer CDRs and full medical CDRs by program (Title II or Title XVI) and by medical diary type for FY 2014 and FY 2015. Please see the worksheet in Appendix A. There are five tabs in the Appendix A worksheet with the following information: 1. CDR counts through September 2014 by cohort for mailers and full medical review, and by cohort; 2. The same counts through August 2014 for CDRs that had medical improvement expected diaries; 3. The same counts through August 2014 for CDRs that had medical improvement possible diaries; 4. The same counts through August 2014 for CDRs that had medical improvement not expected diaries; and 5. The estimated CDR counts by cohort for mailers and full medical reviews for FY 2015. At this time, we are unable to determine the breakout by diary type for the FY 2015 estimate. We estimate that it would be similar to the counts for FY 2014. Metrics to Measure: Number of medical CDRs processed and if we meet our processed goal. 2. Expand Cooperative Disability Investigations (CDI) Units Responsible Components: DCO and Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Lead Individuals: Marguerite Hager, DCO, and Heather Herman, OIG Background/Objective: Working with our OIG, we plan to expand the number of CDI units. According to OIG, CDI units have contributed to agency savings of more than $960 million over the last three fiscal years. We provide most of the funding for these units, and in collaboration with OIG, we expanded the CDI program by seven additional units beginning in FY 2014. We anticipate these 7 units will be fully operational in FY 2015, increasing the total number of units from 25 to 32 nationwide. Enclosure – Page 4 – The Honorable Sam Johnson Update/Timetable: The planned expansion of the CDI Program is on track. Additional CDI Staffing As of September 30, 14 of the 24 additional investigators that we identified as part of the planned CDI expansion efforts are on board and working in their assigned CDI unit. New CDI Units The Detroit CDI unit became operational on August 15, and the Baltimore CDI unit became operational on September 22. We are planning and preparing to implement five additional units in FY 2015. Metrics to Measure: The number of new CDI units implemented in FY 2015, with five additional units as the goal. Agency savings because of the CDI units. 3. Anti-Fraud Training Responsible Components: Deputy Commissioner for Human Resources (DCHR) and Deputy Commissioner for Budget, Finance, Quality, and Management (DCBFQM) Lead Individuals: Lydia Marshall, DCHR, and Kara Jabers, DCBFQM Background/Objective: We expanded anti-fraud training to all Social Security Administration (SSA) employees during FY 2014, with specific focus on lessons learned from Puerto Rico and New York City. SSA and state disability determination services (DDS) front-line employees remain our best line of defense against those seeking to cheat the system. Update/Timetable: On September 23, the Subcommittee requested the following information: • The component(s) responsible for the training; • The date, audience, trainers, and content outline for each training session; • The dates when the video on demand (VOD) of the training will be available, and whether employees are required to review the video; and • A detailed description of our training plans for FY 2015. The following update addresses this request. Mandatory Interactive Video Teletraining (IVT /VOD Training Our Office of Learning (OL), in collaboration with OIG and representatives from DCO, developed a mandatory national anti-fraud IVT/VOD training program for SSA and DDS employees. The IVT broadcast aired on September 17, and the VOD was available as of September 22. The anti-fraud training video consists of